I remember it was about 1951 when the local authority began resurfacing Wandsworth Bridge Road and no doubt other roads and they dug up thousands of tar-impregnated wooden blocks which had been the older surface material. These blocks were piled up six feet high at the sides of the road ready for disposal later but everyone on the street, my parents included, came out with wheelbarrows and rushed the blocks home to use as a free coal-substitute. You've never seen such excitement, it was like the pictures of looters in some third world country! I still remember how the room filled with horrible brown smoke and a nasty tarry smell when one of those things was put on the fire...I also remember all the horse-drawn wagons that were still used in the 1940s/50s - milk, coal, brewers, etc. One dairyman's horse once turned and bit my aunt Elsie's shoulder as she passed, for no apparent reason. She was most upset.

I was born in November 1942 at the Maternity Home on Parsons Green. The building is still there but is now a local medical centre. We lived at 46 Wandsworth Bridge Road. My earliest memory is of being in the shored-up coal-cellar which served as an air-raid shelter. I must have been about one year old. It's a snapshot memory of the family's faces looking at me from their bunk beds in a dark interior. I can also remember a barrage balloon over the Eelbrook common, probably around 1944. There were 'pig-bins' that were lined along the street during the war years where we took our potato peelings, cabbage leaves etc. to be sent out to the farms. I recall frequently being sent out with a collander full of food waste to tip into the nearest bin on the corner. I also remember being given a £1 note to take to our landlady Mrs Pullen who lived down the road above one of the shops. This was a week's rent on our house in about 1949/50. 

My father L.A Wilcox* was born in the area in 1904 at 72 Rosebury Road in a house shared by his parents and his mother's sister's family. He was baptised at St Matthews Church. His sister-my aunt Elsie- who lived with us, had worked as a girl before the war at the  local Pacamac. Several women who had worked there with her were still her friends and lived nearby.

In later life my father became an eminent painter* of marine pictures and his works are in collections around the world including Buckingham Palace and the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich.He died a little early in 1972. My two uncles who were my father's older brothers Bertie and William were killed in the Middle East at the end of WW1. William is buried beside the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and Bertie is in Amara in Iraq - which goes to show how far the war extended. The other brother Harry came back from Flanders wounded but lived until the 1950s and I remember him well. He married one of the army nurses Agnes Boston and they lived in our house until their first children, my cousins, were born in the 1930s.

Opposite us at number 47 lived Dr Victor Guyer. I remember him as a very good-natured young doctor who would pop across the road frequently to attend to one or other of our family, especially to grandmother who was bedridden for most of her latter years. My maternal grandmother Alice Spurgeon had a room in the doctor's house for the last few years of her life. Next to Dr Guyer's  house were the Seddingtons. Mr Seddington worked at Jolly's butchers in Wandsworth Bridge Road. I believe Shirley Seddington was a friend of my elder brother John. She became a school inspector in later life. Our next-door neighbour at number 44 was the local midwife Mrs Brooks. Another neighbour was Jessie Fairley who I have recently re-contacted on Friends Reunited since we both went to Peterborough School round the corner. Our neighbour at 48 was Miss Eckert (?) who died around 1949. Our music teacher Dorothy Massey lived at approx number 38 or 40. She taught piano and violin to a lot of local children. My parents referred to her as Mrs Pickford, I think she was probably widowed and reverted to using her maiden name.

I  recall well the terrible smog of 1952 when coming home from school at lunch-time one could barely see ten feet in the thick, brown and smelly fog. My paternal grandmother was one of the many casualties, dying of bronchitis/pneumonia that December.

There was a Coronation street party in 1953 and we were invited to watch the ceremony on TV by a lady who lived in Studdridge Street and there were several local children there watching the tiny screen. I seem to remember she provided sandwiches and orange juice. 

There was a fearsome dentist near the New King's Road end of WBR in the 1950s- a Polish lady named Madame Blonska. She frightened all the children who were taken to her and some of the adults too. I remember being given cocaine for dental treatment - a very strange experience in those days. There was an ironmongers in Wandsworth Bridge Road run in the late 1940s by Mr and Mrs Levene. Their son David was my classmate at Peterborough School and my first Jewish friend. Owen Jones Dairy was our local food shop.

After leaving Fulham in 1954 and settling in Barnes my older brother John and I ended up at Kingston School of Art. Later my parents moved out of London to live near Littlehampton for the rest of their lives. I've been settled in Swiss Cottage for the last 35 years but occasionally make a nostalgic trip across to WBR on the bus to look at the old house. 

*William is the son of painter L.A.Wilcox. See Personalities.